Possibly the third-best music photos in the Bay Area

LA punks FIDLAR played a raucous sold-out show at Slim’s in San Francisco on December 2nd, a make-up show for the cancelled October date they missed due to an illness. The show was well worth the wait, and came at a perfect time as an extremely busy Bay Area fall concert schedule begins to slow down. But anyone feeling a post-Thanksgiving malaise was quickly and forcibly jolted back to life, both by the band’s thunderous energy on stage and by the nonstop moshing of the crowd. Throw in some surprisingly adept stage diving and crowd surfing, and the show made a late entry for one of the best concerts of the year.

Bay Area quartet Meat Market opened the show with a terrifically dance-y set of garage rock. We saw them open for Mikal Cronin back in April, and while that set was pretty good, this one was a lot more fun. Maybe it was the crowd, or maybe the band is just tighter now, but they seem to be on a pretty good trajectory.

FIDLAR took the stage shortly after and proceeded to blow the goddam roof off the place. It’s rare to see a stage barricade at Slim’s, given it’s relatively small size, but it was clear minutes into the show that that steel barrier two feet from the stage was the only thing stopping a constant barrage of stage diving by the fanatical crowd. Still, more than a few determined souls managed to get around the barricade and execute some shockingly competent stage dives. I’ve been critical and disappointed at the current level of stage-dive/crowd-surfing execution, which could more accurately be described as stage-slowly-lower-yourself-into-the-crowd-ing, but this FIDLAR crowd really nailed it. I don’t know if they’ve been watching old YouTube videos or were inspired by singer Zac Carper’s Nirvana t-shirt, but the level of crowd behavior really highlighted what an insanely fun band FIDLAR is live.

Playing songs from both their self-titled debut and their terrific follow-up Too, the band tore through a too-quick 16-song set. Toward the end, the band gave the crowd somewhat of a breather, requesting/commanding them to sit for the opening of FIDLAR closer “Cocaine,” until jumping up as the first power chord rang out and resuming their all-night freak-out.